American Library Association: Technology Trends

At the annual American Library Association Conference, a panel of expert technology librarians held forth on most interesting library-tech trends. I will be reporting on these all week.

Super Fast Book Scanning: 200 pages in one minute or less
University of Tokyo professor Masatoshi Ishikawa (covered a few months ago on IEEE Spectrum's Automaton blog), which could, in just a few years, allow a handheld device, such as a phone, to scan an entire 200-page book in one minute or less. I'm not really sure how we deal with this but it's not avoidable.

Click on Automaton blog in the previous paragraph for more information and to see the scanner in action on YouTube.

Credo Reference has Topic Pages

We're excited to announce the launch of Credo Topic Pages, now available on http://www.credoreference.com!

Topic Pages can now also assist you in finding your library. By allowing search engines to index Topic Pages, Credo aims to direct even more users to their local libraries - and to your library resources. After finding topic pages in a search engine, users can find their local library on our login page that lists nearby subscribers.

How to find Topic Pages
To find Topic Pages, simply start searching Credo. If a Topic Page exists for your query, it will appear at the very top of your search results.

Technology in Higher Education

The National Center for Academic Transformation (NCAT), a small nonprofit considered to be the intellectual center of the technology-based course transformation movement, has labored mightily and with much success to help more colleges bring their undergraduate courses into the modern age. But it has labored precisely because colleges have yet to decide, en masse, that adopting a proven method to produce better student learning outcomes for less money is the kind of thing they should naturally do on their own.

At Fairfield University here in Connecticut, seven different professors all taught a general biology course with a total enrollment of 260 students. Fairfield consolidated the biology course into a single section co-taught by two professors and used technology, such as clickers and laptops, to supplement the learning experience and to make sure the larger setting was not too impersonal. The changes reduced course costs by 31 percent. At the same time, student retention of concepts covered in the course also improved, as measured by questions given to students in the required second-year course for biology majors specifically designed to test concepts covered in both the redesigned and traditional class.
Here is the full report.

What Do Colleges Want Students to Read?

"In the last decade, the number of colleges that assign summer reading to incoming freshmen has soared. The National Association of Scholars has tracked and analyzed 290 such programs—the most comprehensive study of “common reading” programs to date. The study reveals national patterns in book selection. Major findings include a widespread assignment of books that promote liberal political views; a preponderance of contemporary writing; and a surprisingly low level of intellectual difficulty."
Read the report.
Source: National Association of Scholars Web Page

Dr. Chocolate

Meet Andy McShea, a scientist using his training to make better—and healthier—chocolate. He’s known as Doc Choc, because he came to Theo Chocolate in 2007, after 7 years at the Seattle biotechnology company CombiMatrix and 3 years as a postdoctoral fellow at Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center. He’s now using his science background to make better—and healthier—chocolate.

Read more.
Source: Dr. Chocolate - The Scientist - Magazine of the Life Sciences

Visualizing U.S. Health Data

It was a busy day yesterday for tools from Bing (Microsoft's search engine) and Google to assist in visualizing health information.

Bing's application will allow you to overlay health data onto Bing Maps so you can better understand and visualize the health of a community.

Access the Bing Health Maps

Categories of Data Include:
+ Birth Measures (Low Birth Weight, Premature Births, etc.
+ Death Measures (Homicide, Lung Cancer, etc.)
+ Health Risk Factors (Smoker, Diabetes, etc.)
(Data sources: U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS)
Institute of Medicine
The map is part of the Community Health Data Initiative)

Shortly after the Bing announcement hit the web, Google made their announcement.
HHS has published useful data about communities, hospitals and nursing homes and made it available for download. So Google combined some of this information using Google Fusion Tables, a database service in the cloud that makes it easy to explore, visualize and share structured data.

Access the Google Health Map (Hospital Data)

At the moment (of course this will likely change), the Bing Health Map has a lot more data to “play with.”
Source: Report of Greg Sterling from Search Engine Land (SEL)

Google Lists Top Most Visited Web Sites

June 2nd, 2010--In a resource prepared for its advertisers, Google has listed the top 1000 most-visited web sites based on unique visitors. Google.com is not on the list.

The Top 10

1. Facebook
2. Yahoo
3. Live.com
4. Wikipedia.org
5. MSN.com
6. Microsoft
7. Blogspot (owned by Google)
8. Baidu.com
9. QQ.com
10. Mozilla.com

Here are a few other rankings:

18. Twitter
22. Amazon.com
31. Flickr.com
44. IMDB
56. Linkedin.com
83. NY Times
102. Scribd
166. Reference.com
179. Reuters.com

Library Workshop June 3

Students, Faculty, Staff--you are invited!

We are repeating the workshop on accessing library resources from home presented by Dan Bonacum of the IT department.

Library Workshop
Accessing Library resources off-campus: Conquering the Virtual Private Network
Room 142 (next to the library)
Thursday, June 3
begins at 10 a.m.

Break free from Oil Addiction

This Memorial Day weekend the Sierra Club and the American Security Project released a joint report showing how America’s addiction to oil threatens our national security, our economy and our environment. Read "Ending Our Dependence on Oil" that highlights the connections between national security and energy and lays out solutions for mitigating the threats posed by continued oil dependence.
Source: Sierra Club Currents June 1

Need Info on the Go? Text a Librarian

Need Info On the Go? Remember to Text a Librarian!

Students, faculty and staff at Goodwin College now ask questions and get information from the library by text message. For patrons who are unable to ask a librarian in person or online, or those who simply prefer texting over talking, the Text a Librarian service provides a convenient option for getting info on their mobile phones. The service does not display phone numbers and generates an anonymous ID for each patron in order to reference conversation history.

Try it now!
Text ASKGOOD to 66746 for instructions
Save 66746 in your contacts as ASKGOOD

LIBRARY CLOSED SUNDAY AND MONDAY

The library will be closed Sunday and Monday because of Memorial Day Weekend. We will be open Saturday from 9:30 to 1:30 as usual.

Please visit the library this week and next week to see the display of books related to Memorial Day.

Condition of Education 2010

The National Center for Education Statistics today released The Condition of Education 2010, a Congressionally mandated report to the nation on education in America today. It covers all aspects of education, with 49 indicators that include findings on enrollment trends, demographics, and outcomes.

The report projects that public school enrollment will rise from 49 million in 2008 to 52 million by 2019, with the largest increase expected in the South. Over the past decade, more students attended both charter schools and high-poverty schools (those in which more than 75 percent of the students qualified for free or reduced-price lunch). One in six U.S. students attends a high-poverty school; and the number of charter school students has tripled since 1999.

This year’s report features a special section that looks closer at these high-poverty schools in America, examining the types and locations of schools, the characteristics of the students and their teachers and principals; and student achievement. It finds a wide and persistent gap in educational achievement.

Read the report.The Condition of Education 2010
Source: National Center for Education Statistics

NEW MAGAZINE: URBAN FARM

It doesn’t take a farm to have the heart of a farmer. Now, with this burgeoning sustainable-living movement, you don’t have to own acreage to fulfill your dream of raising your own food. Urban Farm magazine will guide you down the path to self sustainability.

Goodwin Library now subscribes to Urban Farm. Published quarterly, this magazine promotes the benefits of self-sufficiency and provides the tools with which to do it on any size property. Between the covers, you’ll find how-to projects, backyard-livestock advice, profiles of urban farmers, “green” and innovative products, and of course, recipes for preparing your homegrown vegetables, eggs and other farm bounty.

Urban Farm reaches out to those in the city and suburbs, those who are inspired by the local-food movement, and those who want to raise chickens and grow food for themselves, supporting local agriculture and living more sustainably.

The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet's Nest is here!

The Girl With the Dragon Tatoo
The Girl Who Played With Fire
Now you can read the third novel in the Stieg Larsson's best selling trilogy--The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet's Nest--just arrived in the library today!

Also new to the library today:
Total Eclipse of the Heart by Zane
Savor the Moment by Nora Roberts

Google announces CloudCourse

When will Google stop? Google last week announced a new course-scheduling system, CloudCourse,that could potentially have implications for higher education. CloudCourse is integrated with Google Calendar and allows users to schedule classes, look up user profiles, and sync the service's data with internal university systems. CloudCourse was built entirely on Google's App Engine, which allows users to build and host Web apps. Google hopes that CloudCourse can serve as an example of how to use the App Engine.

One potential use for CloudCourse is to manage class rosters with tools that allow users to look at enrolled versus waitlisted students, mark student attendance, and change a student's enrollment status in a course. Universities typically already have an internal system to complete the tasks CloudCourse can perform.

CloudCourse might help university administrators who don't have the time or resources to worry about hardware hosting and dealing with traffic bursts that occur during class enrollment periods.
Source: Wired Campus

Workshop: Connect to Databases Off Campus

LEARN HOW TO CONNECT TO THE LIBRARY RESOURCES OFF CAMPUS!
Room 142 (next to the library)
10 a.m. May 27

Dan Bonacum of the IT Department will demonstrate how to use the Virtual Private Network successfully. Please tell everyone!

Guide to Online Learning

Power Up: A Practica Student's Guide to Online Learning by Barret, Poe, and Spagnola-Doyle (124 pages)

Many students have asked for help with online learning and not just how to get on to Blackboard. Now in the library, this book discusses the realities of online learning and highlights the resources available to online students. The tips and techniques will help you succeed in the virtual classroom. You will discover how to regulate your learning paces and processes--skills that will serve you well into the future. This book is published by Pearson Prentice Hall who also has a Student Success Supersite where students and faculty can find an arrray of resources.

Educational Video

Accessible Educational Technology Series

Australia's open access repository of research and scholarly output at Bond University includes a video series on education, accessibility, and assitive technology. The videos are posted on Vimeo, the high-definition video sharing and networking site. The series include videos on topics such as "Issues of Online Learning ina disability Studies Context," "Braille Literacy," and "Over-Reliance on Assisted Technology." Videso feature inerviews with disabled students and scholars.
Access here. http://vimeo.com/8205436
Source: Association of College and Research Library News May 2010

Book of the Day: Gift of Fear

Recommended by Pam Kudra and Oprah

Gift of Fear by Gavin De Becker
Available in the Goodwin Library

The Gift of Fear is a must-read for everyone, particularly women. It teaches people how to stay safe, how to avoid becoming a victim, how to listen to your instincts and react. The author developed the Mosaic (a threat assessment tool) that is used nation wide by the court systems, police departments, and schools. Gavin De Beckers believes that most violent acts are random and have clear warning signs enabling us to stay safer in the community.

The Gift of Fear educates the reader on situations that involve stalkers, men who abuse woman, predators, death threats, disgruntled employees, or mass killers. He offers the readers lessons on survival signals, relying on one's intuition, separating what is real from imagined danger, and predicting dangerous behavior. He also teaches the readers to evaluate whether someone will use violence against them or not.

Baby's Hearing Test

Nowadays, 97 percent of babies born in this country have their hearing screened in the newborn nursery. That means essential follow-up testing and treatment can begin very early indeed. But the key term is “follow-up.”

As many as 46 percent of children who failed the newborn screening test in 2007 did not have documented repeat testing and treatment, said Marcus Gaffney, a health scientist with the Early Hearing Detection and Intervention program at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. “Screening a child doesn’t do a lot of good,” Mr. Gaffney told me, “if you don’t take the appropriate follow-up.”

To learn more, read the full story, “What to Do When a Newborn Can’t Hear”.
Source: New York Times May 20 2010